I saw a video this morning with the new features and I'm blown away at the rate of improvement. I started using KiCad with v4, and it worked but was clunky. Now, it's such an incredible tool. I tell anyone looking for PCB software that if your budget is less than $1k, just use KiCad.
KiCad 8.0
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: KiCad 8.0
#12Thanks again to the KiCad team. I know a few of them personally and every person has been nothing but helpful.
Our most recent project was started in KiCad 5 and it shames me to admit that there have been 3 KiCad releases since we started and we are now just getting finished (with the first board). [1]
I personally use the #kicad@liberachat IRC channel whenever I need help (when a web search doesn't find the info). It is always a great place to get help or find out the status of the next release.
Again...much thanks to the KiCad team. The work you are doing does not go unnoticed. Now...if we can just get FreeCAD the same amount of development maybe we can strip away a bit of the pain in switching from the other mainstream CAD software.
Re: KiCad 8.0
#13Are there in person communities for this sort of thing? I've set myself a personal project to reproduce some circuits I have in a 1947 paper. But I'm not a hardware guy, huge tracts of the tooling are opaque, best practices are unclear, etc etc etc.
So I'm looking to just come meet people in person who know the material and can provide advice. Do such groups exist? Especially in Los Angeles?
Re: KiCad 8.0
#14Are there in person communities for this sort of thing? I've set myself a personal project to reproduce some circuits I have in a 1947 paper. But I'm not a hardware guy, huge tracts of the tooling are opaque, best practices are unclear, etc etc etc. So I'm looking to just come meet people in person who know the material and can provide advice. Do such groups exist? Especially in Los Angeles?
Best bet is probably to find a local hackerspace.
Re: KiCad 8.0
#15I use altium professionaly, and kicad for personal projects. it it more than capable for what I need (think simple 4layer boards) and overall kicad 7 has been a great experience on apple silicon. I have not attempted high layer count or high speed design (ddr4 ram etc.). so I cannot speak to how it performs here. but I plan to continue using it for personal projects. if I where to do a startup I would also probably u…
While it's not quite as high speed as DDR4, I've designed some simple PCIe board with KiCAD (OCuLink to PCIe x4, M2 A+E to 2.5GbE). It does require some hand-holding though.
Edit: Completing comment
Re: KiCad 8.0
#16I'm writing a comprehensive review of KiCad 8.
Please see here:
https://techexplorations.com/blog/kicad/kicad-8-new-and-upda...
I'm probably halfway through all the features I plan to write about (with video!)
Enjoy!
Re: KiCad 8.0
#17I use Kicad regularly, and I encourage others who also use it to donate an amount similar to an annual license for the proprietary competitors. The team has already proven that they can maintain such a useful tool with a tiny budget, imagine what they could do if they had the same annual budget as Altium...
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Re: KiCad 8.0
#18I use Kicad regularly, and I encourage others who also use it to donate an amount similar to an annual license for the proprietary competitors. The team has already proven that they can maintain such a useful tool with a tiny budget, imagine what they could do if they had the same annual budget as Altium...
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